It's Been a While
by zsuzsi
Summary: a short drabble -Merlin/Arthur, Merlin/Lancelot - AU - Merlin goes through some reincarnations, meeting Arthur each time.


Disclaimer: this is a purely a work of fan-appreciation, I own nothing, and no money is be made or anything like that.

Thanks for reading!

*-*-*

It's been a while.

The last time Merlin saw Arthur, he was married with four children, three from his first marriage, with Hunith and one from his second with Gwen. Only in this lifetime Hunith was called Susanne, and Gwen Penelope. Penelope, what a lovely name. It had been the eighties, one of those lifetimes in which the visions came too often and too strong, and Merlin had dealt with that by using a lot of drugs. Seeing his lifetimes stretching behind him had been mad and terrifying, seeing the one he was currently engaged in stretching ahead – perhaps as much as another thirty or forty years of looking at Arthur, who didn't remember - knowing who he had been and not being able to explain but having to always make an effort to try to remember which part he was playing, was it the mother or the lover or the son, had been exhausting. It had been odd, but not difficult, to figuratively stick his finger into the mix of destinies and push things around, until the path that representing his own life veered and then fell off from what it should have been. Better to die early, young and mad, in the hope that the next life would be better than the one he faced now.

*-*-*

In the thirties, Merlin wore a pea coat and had a tall umbrella. She cropped her dark hair short, tom boyish, which her parents disapproved of, and used her first paycheck from the lab to buy her mother a peacock blue wool dress. Upon the presentation of this dress, her mother gave her a lecture about the importance of money and waste and did not even say thank-you properly. Merlin did not care about this. She was young and it was worth it too see how well her mother carried herself in that dress, a little taller and straighter than at other moments, as regal as a Queen.

In that lifetime Merlin did not remember who she was, at all except sometimes just before she drifted off to sleep. She had only meant to work in the laboratory for a year or two – until graduation - but then the war broke out and many of the young men were forced to leave, and she was offered a permanent position. It would have been terrible to say that the war was a lucky thing, but in a way it was lucky for Merlin, for that was where she discovered her love of science and where she met Lancelot. Lance had first been her supervisor, and once Merlin and the other girls had been prone to giggling about him over cups of tea in the break room. When he came back, one leg shorter but not at all diminished, they struck up where they left off, a comfortable friendship that soon blossomed into a comfortable love and marriage.

It was Lancelot who asked Merlin if she wanted to think about applying to graduate school. He always encouraged her in her desire to work, even though, as a result, there were years and years when he frequently came home to a dirty house and no food, none of the things a husband ought reasonably to have been entitled too. Merlin would drag herself home in the evenings to find that he had fried himself an egg or some sausage and was reading in glow of the evening sun, waiting for her.

So Lance was kind and sweet, and there were times when Merlin loved him so much that she thought her heart would burst. Still, she had the sense of something missing. She always believed this unavoidable, a natural human emotion: up until the very moment when the doctor placed Arthur gently in her arms. Looking into those murky-clear baby eyes, Merlin had felt the missingness that had haunted her vanish. There was nothing she could do but stroke his head and offer Lance a silent apology, for the little usurper had come and taken over the first place in her heart.

That was a good lifetime, anyway. Arthur had grown into a stout toddler, and then a skinny-strong boy, who ran and played and caught newts in the frog pond, and if the glint of his blond hair in the sunlight sometimes gave his mother a sense of déjà-vu, it was not an unpleasant one. Arthur because a reckless teenager, but on his way to maturing into a responsible adult, so that by the time she and Lance died (a bit younger than would have been nice, but it was a car accident), they were both able to leave with some hope that their son would be all right in the world.

*-*-*

It is perhaps worth noting that in the following life – the one in which Merlin saw far too much, and ended up unhappy for it – he thought for a long time that his mother of the lifetime prior might have been Morgana. It was only one day when he happened to remember how his mother had looked in her blue dress he suddenly realized that, no, it had been Uther all along. It was a shock to him. Nearly always, no matter what kind of person he was born, male or female, rich or poor, Uther made himself powerful. But the pinched face of a simple woman, very tired and afraid of joy, was new for him. Perhaps, Merlin wondered, Uther was finally learning to see the value the smaller roles, the humbler ones: was, in fact, changing for the better, bit by bit, over the millennia.

*-*-*

It was a kind of punishment for having killed himself in the eighties, that the next time he was born a bit too young: at least, had he waited a little longer, he might have been the same age as Arthur.

He was born in Tennessee, but as quickly as possible upon becoming an adult he moved to New York City. It took him years to become comfortable with his own sexuality, but when he finally did it was as if he could release a great breath that he didn't know he had been holding. He was in his mid-thirties, out on the town for a night with friends, enjoying his life and not even looking for anything serious, when Arthur came in from the night.

"Ooh, look at him," Percival said appreciatively. Merlin had laughed a little awkwardly because just the sight of the boy made him hard, but he couldn't have been more than twenty-one or twenty-two, and lusting after the younger guys always made him feel like a bit of a perv. Golden hair, trim waist, great lips and – _oh my God shit he caught me staring_. He had distracted himself by taking a long drink and therefore not quite caught Percival saying, over the din of the music, "Oh, wait, I think he's coming over here."

" Would you like to dance?"

Merlin gaped, confirmed that he the one being addressed, and gaped again. Percy gave him a lewd wink that he returned, figuring, hey, why not, I can have fun once in a while too. And let Arthur lead him out onto the dance floor.

"I'm Arthur," Arthur said, and Merlin gaped, because, usually, that didn't happen. "I'm Elliott," he told him.

"Elliott," Arthur rolled the name around in his mouth, as if it tasted odd. "Somehow – you don't look like an Elliott, I wouldn't have guessed."

" Well, you look like an Arthur," Merlin said, and then, probably because of the drink, he had the sudden, inexplicably thought that he was just so happy to see him, that it had too long, and so he threw his head back and laughed. It was going to be _one of those lifetimes_, whatever that meant. He just felt glad.

"What's so funny?" Arthur asked, amused himself, and Merlin shrugged, and leaned in closer.

*-*-*

Arthur, it turned out, was older than he looked – 26 – and he was a civil rights attorney. He was still young, though, and growing up in what Merlin slowly began to realize was a position of considerable privilege, had left him a little naïve.

"I mean, just think of what's becoming possible, now," he said to Merlin, over crème brulee on their first date together. " That world's getting smaller. Technology is bringing everyone together. Things are possible now, that couldn't have been done five or ten years ago. We have an opportunity – what's more, we have an obligation – to do things we couldn't do before."

"What kind of things?" Merlin had asked, and Arthur had ducked his head down as if a little embarrassed.

" You know," he said, "the change the world kind."

"Mmmm," Merlin considered. "But people don't change, though, do they? I mean, basic human nature. Our circumstances might, but our basic characters – surely they will always be constant. So we will always have problems - I don't think there's any avoiding that."

Arthur was frowning and shaking his head. "That might be true, but listen - I'm not talking about Avalon or Utopia here. I'm just talking about doing what we can to allow people to reach their full potentials. A generation ago we couldn't have sat here, together, on a date, in public. Now we can. Surely our characters are better for having been able to develop more fully, not to have been suppressed.

" We could have danced the Tango in the Pampas," Merlin deferred, "We could have been Athenians or Samurai in Japan. Cultural norms about sexuality come and go, there's no progression."

"Well, then," Arthur said, leaning back in his chair –Merlin realized that he was entertained by the debate, not annoyed, " then we'll just have to do the best we can, here and now, and let the future take care of itself."

It wasn't a particularly original speech, but somehow that didn't particularly matter – what did were the waves of appeal rolling off of Arthur, combining, perhaps, with the waves of intense attraction Merlin had felt for him since they met. It wasn't hard to believe that Arthur was someone who was going places, and who, whenever he got there, would behave with honor and integrity. He was, in other words, a leader.

"Perhaps you're right," Merlin said. "It's fashionable to be cynical, harder to try. Even if we make the same mistakes a thousand times, we can still get up and try again, right?"

Arthur smiled, and the effect was blinding. All that youthful enthusiasm, from the first time, was coming back again.


End file.
